On the first day of the Yom Kippur War, an Israeli photo reconnaissance plane, flying well inside Sinai to keep out of range of surface-to-air (SAM) missiles across the Suez Canal, scanned the Egyptian deployment on the far bank. The Israel Air Force commander, Maj.-Gen. Benny Peled, would not see the photographs until days later. They showed Egyptian tanks, fuel and supply trucks, troop carriers, and other vehicles lined up for miles, packed together virtually bumper to bumper on narrow desert roads waiting to cross into Sinai on pontoon bridges being assembled in the water. Had he known of this...

President Richard Nixon was drunk during the height of the 1973 Yom Kippur War, according to veteran journalist Tim Weiner writing for Politico magazine. Weiner’s book, One Man Against the World: The Tragedy of Richard Nixon, makes the charge. The former New York Times reporter claims that a call recorded by Henry Kissinger proves Nixon was drunk on the fifth day of the crisis after Egypt and Syria launched a surprise attack on Israel which caught their Intelligence agency by surprise. It became clear in the hours after the 1973 Yom Kippur attack that the Arabs had surprised Israeli forces...

Remembering The Yom Kippur War: An American's StoryBy Joel Leyden Israel News Agency / Israel Forever FoundationAs I write the diary below memories begin to pour back along with the anxiety and tears that we all experienced at the time. For many of us, the scars of war will never heal. Nor should they. image Israel was unprepared for a surprise attack by Syria and Egypt. The Yom Kippur War took the lives of 2,688 Israeli troops. Sitting in the relative safety of a suburban Long Island home, I first heard news reports of Arab armies attacking Israel on October...

Saturday marks Yom Kippur, the holiest day on the Jewish calendar and, this year, the 40th anniversary of the outbreak of the Yom Kippur War, the greatest trauma in Israeli history. On the morning of October 6, 1973—the day on which Yom Kippur fell that year—Chief of Staff David Elazar met with Prime Minister Golda Meir and Defense Minister Moshe Dayan to warn that the Egyptian and Syrian armies were about to attack Israel. Elazar urged a preemptive strike; six years earlier, in the Six-Day War, Israel’s preemptive strike had proved highly effective. But Meir and Dayan, who were under...

The world watches the war of words between Israel and Iran. President Ahmadinejad’s call for the annihilation of the Zionist regime has lost its edge because of overuse. Prime Minister Netanyahu’s reply that Israel has the right to defend itself is as expected as the sun rising in the morning. However, tensions rose to a new high last week with the comment by Iran’s Defense Minister Ahmad Vahidi that “of course this confrontation has always continued; however, since we are in the era of The Coming, this war will be a significant war” (Mashregh news). He was referring to Imam...

Years ago at a conference in Amman, a few Israelis and Egyptians were sitting together chatting. One of the Israelis was asked when he had last visited Egypt. "On October 16, 1973," he answered, somewhat humorously. "And without a passport. I crossed the Suez Canal with my unit until we withdrew a few months later. But now we have peace; I don't mean to insult anyone." A minor commotion ensued. That never happened, some of the Egyptians responded. One of them, a retired general, said to his friends: "Technically, the Israeli is not lying. We drew them across the canal...

A VOLUNTEER REMEMBERS THE YOM KIPPUR WARBy JOEL LEYDENSitting in the relative safety of a suburban Long Island home, I first heard news reports of Arab armies attacking Israel on October 6, 1973. It was not exactly clear what was transpiring in the Middle-East. News reports were censored and the media was not overly kind to Israel. I heard my father say that Israel’s UN Ambassador Abba Eban was to address the United Nations General Assembly. I did not know of Abba Eban, I was expecting an Israeli to speak with a thick Israeli accent that most would not understand....

On the anniversary of the Yom Kippur War and the yartzeit this month of more than 2,500 Israel soldiers who gave their lives in a war for the very survival of the State and the protection of their homes and families, the United States has nearly completed the turn of its policy. The objective of American diplomacy used to be to ensure that Israel received the recognition of the Arab States that it was due as a member of the United Nations. That recognition was to have resulted in the "secure and recognized boundaries free from threats or acts of...

Benny Ben-Dror parachuted from an exploding helicopter in the Yom Kippur War and miraculously survived. Ben-Dror had kept his survival story secret from the public until now. “I was discharged from the IDF in August '73,” explains Ben-Dror, who is now 58, “and one Saturday morning in October I got a call: ‘There’s going to be a war. Come.’”

Precise details of what transpired in Washington during the first week of the Yom Kippur War, launched by Egypt and Syria on October 6, 1973, are hard to come by, in no small measure owing to conflicting accounts given by Secretary of State Henry Kissinger and Secretary of Defense James Schlesinger regarding their respective roles. What is clear, from the preponderance of information provided by those directly involved in the unfolding events, is that President Richard Nixon — overriding inter-administration objections and bureaucratic inertia — implemented a breathtaking transfer of arms, code-named Operation Nickel Grass, that over a four-week period...

(CBS) Sometimes history is shaped by unknown people who operate in the shadowy world of espionage. And this story of war, deception and murder has a plot worthy of a John le Carre novel. Thirty-five years ago, the armies of Egypt and Syria launched a surprise attack against the state of Israel on Yom Kippur, the holiest day of the Jewish year. Militarily, it ended in a stalemate, but in practical terms the war changed the map and the politics of the Middle East. At the center of it all is a little known story about one man who played...

In Israel, Remembering The Yom Kippur War By Joel Leyden Israel News Agency Jerusalem ----October 8, 2008 .....As I wrote the below account 5 years ago, the first time retracing steps taken thirty-five years ago during Yom Kippur in Israel and the US in October 1973, memories began to pour back along with the anxiety and tears that we all experienced at the time. For many of us, the scars of war will never heal. Nor should they. Sitting in the relative safety of a suburban Long Island home, I first heard news reports of Arab armies attacking Israel on...

Cairo: The son-in-law of former Egyptian president Jamal Abdul Nasser, named by Israeli officials as a source for Mossad, "lost his balance" before a fall from his London balcony, Egyptian state media said yesterday. Ashraf Marwan, who died on Wednesday, had been living in London for many years after leaving Egyptian government service in the late 1970s. Israeli media say that Marwan, who was married to Nasser's daughter Mona, had passed a warning to Israel's Mossad intelligence agency on the eve of the 1973 Middle East war that Egypt and Syria were about to attack. The Times of London reported...

Original title: "Egyptian"Karagandan took part in the last Arab-Israeli war Karaganda resident Danakan Nurgaliev is a man with a rare history. He is the only one in our city with the rights and benefits of a soldier-internationalist, though he was never in Afghanistan. Danakan Kasymovich did his duty in a country a bit further away - in Egypt, during the Arab-Israeli war of 1973. "I was born in the Taldykurganskaya district in 1952," Danakan said. "When called up for military service, I was sent first to Amur, in the air defense forces. After about a half-year they sent us through...

Lord, Keep our Troops forever in Your care Give them victory over the enemy... Grant them a safe and swift return... Bless those who mourn the lost. . FReepers from the Foxhole join in prayer for all those serving their country at this time. .................................................................. .................... ........................................... U.S. Military History, Current Events and Veterans Issues Where Duty, Honor and Countryare acknowledged, affirmed and commemorated. Our Mission: The FReeper Foxhole is dedicated to Veterans of our Nation's military forces and to others who are affected in their relationships with Veterans. In the FReeper Foxhole, Veterans or their family members should...

Frontpage Interview’s guest today is Abraham Rabinovich, a reporter for the Jerusalem Post and a United States Army veteran. He is the author of the new book The Yom Kippur War: The Epic Encounter that Transformed the Middle East. FP: Mr. Rabinovich, welcome to Frontpage Interview. It is a pleasure to have you here. Rabinovich: Thank you for inviting me. FP: What inspired you to write on this war? Rabinovich: I covered the Yom Kippur War as a reporter for The Jerusalem Post. It lasted less than three weeks but was such an intense, monumental, event that I could not...

Friday, September 24, 2004 Shabbat Shalom and Gmar Hatima Tov by Caitlyn M. Martin Yom Kippur, the holiest day in the Jewish calendar and the most solemn day in the Jewish year, starts at sundown this evening. (As of this writing it has already started in Israel.) For Jews around the world it is a time of fasting, prayer, and repentance. In Israel everything shuts down for Yom Kippur, from television and radio stations, to public transportation, to all non-emergency government services. Most Israeli Jews, even those who normally consider themselves secular, will be in a synagogue for Kol Nidre...

Politicians were insufficiently informed, and failed to understand the information they did have on the eve of the Yom Kippur War, said Yuval Steinitz, chairman of the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, on Sunday as he released secret committee transcripts from the eve of the Yom Kippur War. The transcripts, kept from the public until now for security reasons, were released as required by law after 30 years — save for two sections, which may be released later, said Steinitz at a press conference in the state archives in Jerusalem. Some of the information failure arose from questions politicians...

The Last Nuclear Moment By AVNER COHEN Since the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945, the world has come to the nuclear brink only twice. The first, and better known, was the Cuban missile crisis of 1962. The second, and much less discussed, occurred in the early days of the Yom Kippur war, which began 30 years ago today. The shock Israelis felt at the Egyptian-Syrian surprise attack on Oct. 6, 1973, can best be compared to that felt by Americans after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. Israel was caught totally unprepared: the government had assumed...